POUGHKEEPSIE – Scenic Hudson, Riverkeeper, Waterkeeper Alliance, Sierra Club an Earthjustice filed an administrative appeal to certain provisions of the US Department of Transportation’s recently published crude oil-by-rail rule.
The groups asked the DOT to abandon “the inadequate emergency responder notification scheme codified in the rule.”
They said emergency responders need additional information about train routes and threats in order to be prepared for oil spills and disasters. The groups said the notification scheme adopted in the rule makes it difficult for emergency responders to obtain that information. They said the notification provisions mirror those designed for anti-terrorism planning and response and are “poorly suited to provide communities with the information they need to prepare for and lessen the consequences of rail accidents and oil spills.”
The environmentalists said the DOT “has caved to the railroads’ desire for secrecy by treating routing information as sensitive security information that must be restricted to a need-to-know-basis.”
